Building a Foundation for Health Informatics Content in Physical Therapy Education Through Concept Analysis and Concept Mapping.

Introduction: Health informatics curricular content, while beneficial to the spectrum of education in physical therapy, is currently only required in physical therapist education programs, and even there, it is only crudely defined. The purpose of our study was to use the techniques of concept analysis and concept mapping to provide an outline of informatics content that can be the foundation for curriculum development and the construction of informatics competencies for physical therapy.

Review of literature: There is no established consensus on the definition of health informatics. Medical and nursing informatics literature that clarifies and agrees on the attributes of health informatics is insufficient for curriculum development. Concept analysis is an approach commonly used in nursing and other health professions to analyze and deconstruct a term, in this case, health informatics, in order to provide clarity on its meaning.

Subjects: A total of 73 definitions of health informatics were extracted from articles that met search criteria.

Methods: We used an 8-step methodology from the literature for concept analysis, which included 1) selecting a concept; 2) determining the aims of the analysis; 3) identifying uses of the concept; 4) determining the defining attributes of the concept; 5) identifying a model case; 6) identifying related and illegitimate cases; 7) identifying antecedents and consequences; and 8) defining empirical referents. In addition, concept mapping was used to develop a visual representation of the thematic attributes and the elements that make them up.

Results: We provide a visual map of the concept we now term "informatics in human health and health care" and clarify its attributes of data, disciplinary lens, multidisciplinary science, technology, and application. We also provide clarification through the presentation of a model case and a contrary case.

Discussion and conclusion: Concept analysis and mapping of informatics in human health and health care provided clarity on content that should be addressed across the continuum of physical therapy education. The next steps from this work will be to develop competencies for all levels of physical therapy education.